Defect‐Engineered Electrically‐Injected Germanium‐on‐Insulator Waveguide Light Emitters at Telecom Wavelengths

Abstract

Ge‐on‐insulators (GOIs) have been extensively explored as a potential platform for electronic‐photonic integrated circuits (EPICs), enabling various emerging applications. Although an efficient electrically‐injected light source is highly desirable, realizing such devices with optimal light emission efficiency remains challenging. Here, the first room‐temperature electrically‐injected Ge waveguide light emitters consisting of a lateral p–i–n homojunction on a GOI platform that can be monolithically integrated with EPICs are demonstrated. A high‐quality Ge active layer is transferred onto an insulator layer with the misfit dislocations in the Ge active layer eliminated to suppress unwanted nonradiative recombination. A 0.165% tensile strain is introduced to enhance the directness of the band structure and improve the light emission efficiency. The device comprises a waveguide structure with a significantly improved optical confinement as the optical resonator and a lateral p–i–n homojunction structure as the electrical injection structure. Under continuous‐wave electrical current injection at room temperature, enhanced electroluminescence is successfully observed at telecommunications wavelengths covering the C, L, and U bands, with improved efficiency. Theoretical analysis suggests that the quantum efficiency of Ge light emitters is dramatically affected by the defect density. These results pave the way for developing efficient, room‐temperature, electrically‐injected light emitters for next‐generation GOI‐based EPICs.